Thank you Stephen! I have been using an SR18 for drums with my live band trio for over a year now and have been increasingly paranoid about losing ALL my drum patterns and songs. This week I bought a second SR18 used and using your excellent video, was able to completely backup the original SR18 and restore it to the new one. This is a HUGE relief for me knowing I have now a working backup and can now use the 2nd SR18 to start adding new songs (the original machine's Pattern banks are FULL). I used a Roland UM-1 MIDI interface and the Windows MIDI-OX program to receive and save the SYSEX files. Thank you so much Stephen for this excellent video explanation!!!
Thanks for your videos, they are helpful. The SR18 has been a little more difficult to learn than I thought it would. I look forward to seeing more of your videos in the future.
YES thanks...... I have promised a number of videos to people who asked for specific things .... like using footpedals in a live gig to select songs.... prolong a few bars, so the soloist can adlib ..... generally break up the monotony and allow the SR18 to adapt to situations that solo musicians encounter in bars and clubs..... the SR18 has these capabilities (most people just do not know about them)..... and it has been designed to REPLACE a live drummer by promoting VARIATION and FLEXIBILITY (this may be why it seems to be hard to learn and difficult to use)....but actually it makes perfect sense to "have all those buttons on it" when you have actually figured it out ..... in a live show, between buttons and pedals you can make it do ANYTHING a live drummer would do
Thanks Stephen! This is exactly what I needed. A step by step walkthrough. I never would have figured all of this out on my own. I don't have the user interface for conversion. I have a conversion cable (MIDI to USB). I had some success a couple years ago transferring data from an old SR-16, but didn't really know what I was doing. I'm going to give this a try. Thanks so much for taking time to do that. ROCK ON!
Thanks for your comment .... glad I was able to help .... the conversion cable should work also.... best wishes and I do intend to make other vids for SR18 ..... but it was good to do one that was actually requested 😊
1. turn the Alesis SR18 off 2.Press and hold SAVE/COPY and ERASE buttons together 3. While holding down these buttons, turn on the SR-18 and keep holding down the buttons for 10 seconds 4. Release both buttons at the same time and the SR-18 will boot up after Reset is complete (may take a few seconds) You are done ..... your machine is back to factory state .... HOWEVER, you cannot get back the "factory sounds" that came in the USER memory.... so if possible, you should backup these sounds to a DAW using MIDI Bulk Dump as shown in this video above
Thank you Stephen for your valuable video. However, I cannot locate the Sysex view in Cakewalk. I must be missing something obvious but I am now reaching desperation as I must reprogram about 30 patches so I can use my SR18 with a second band. Please point me to the Sysex View if it still exists.
First of all I am using Sonar version 6 LITE on this video..... a VERY old, but VERY simple version...... however, I believe that on ALL versions you simply click on "VIEW" tab and select Sysex from the drop-down menu..... I will confirm this shortly as I actually have all the versions of Sonar right up to PLATINUM (when they went out of business) .... on various other computers in the studio.
Thank you for the reply, Stephen. Do you know if there is still a sysex view in Cakewalk by Bandlab and where it might be found? I can't get it to come up for me. Alan
@@StephenMendes Thank you for your indulgence. I think that might be my problem as I have the most up to date version (by bandlab) and there appears to be no such option in the drop down menu under "Views". So I can't access anywhere to load and retrieve Sysex data. A pain because I need to store some custom patches to free up some space.
@@alansandeman1741 Try holding down these 3 keys together...... ALT + SHIFT + 7 ..... that should bring up the Sysex Banks screen ..... IF they have not changed it
@@alansandeman1741 PLEASE NOTE: The "Sysex banks" screen is ONLY available when you have a PROJECT loaded....... so you will need to create a "New Project" before you can see it 🙂
Thanks so much for this Stephen really helpful...I was wondering does this save all contents from the sr16 even patterns I've created myself which took me ages to make and if so can I then save them from my DAW to my Pc as a backup or even transfer them to ext disk or cd/dvd....thanks
You can certainly do a SysEx dump of your SR16 into your DAW and save the file anywhere you like .... even put it on a cloud 😊 or a flash drive or external disk..... However, I do not think you can "Restore" the contents of an SR18 from an SR16 backup ..... the two machines are similar but NOT identical ..... your best bet would be to hook the machines together with a MIDI cable and make SR16 the "master" and the SR18 the "slave" for timing clock and MIDI real time song control .... then set SR18 on record .... SR16 on play .... and copy each pattern and song over individually
You can ONLY save "snare volume" (or anything else) on USER patterns...... you cannot save on the PRESET patterns .... make sure you are trying to save to the correct memory space
I am from a country called Barbados ..... and I am glad you found an interesting video on my channel..... TUTORIALS about MUSIC GEAR is the main focus of the channel and most people seem to be able to follow them even with the accent 🙂
better do it soon 🙂 ..... unless this works you are DOOMED eventually anyway.... but I know the feeling.... I had the same fears with an RX11 back in 1984
@@StephenMendes I suppose I could buy a second one and try importing everything back to that new one first. That way I'll know if it worked or not without having to assume the risk of losing all my work
@@eishawave3934 yes you could do that....... but dont wait too long, one of these days you may have to restore...... I lost my Yamaha RX11 when it developed problems (all my songs in the memory GONE) that was somewhere back in 2002 ...... and is the reason I bought the Alesis ..... so the sooner you can certify your backups (by whatever means you choose) the safer you will be.... I think you should buy a second one..... it seems you are quite dependent on it 🙂
Thank you Stephen!
I have been using an SR18 for drums with my live band trio for over a year now and have been increasingly paranoid about losing ALL my drum patterns and songs.
This week I bought a second SR18 used and using your excellent video, was able to completely backup the original SR18 and restore it to the new one.
This is a HUGE relief for me knowing I have now a working backup and can now use the 2nd SR18 to start adding new songs (the original machine's Pattern banks are FULL).
I used a Roland UM-1 MIDI interface and the Windows MIDI-OX program to receive and save the SYSEX files.
Thank you so much Stephen for this excellent video explanation!!!
Thanks for your videos, they are helpful. The SR18 has been a little more difficult to learn than I thought it would.
I look forward to seeing more of your videos in the future.
YES thanks...... I have promised a number of videos to people who asked for specific things .... like using footpedals in a live gig to select songs.... prolong a few bars, so the soloist can adlib ..... generally break up the monotony and allow the SR18 to adapt to situations that solo musicians encounter in bars and clubs..... the SR18 has these capabilities (most people just do not know about them)..... and it has been designed to REPLACE a live drummer by promoting VARIATION and FLEXIBILITY (this may be why it seems to be hard to learn and difficult to use)....but actually it makes perfect sense to "have all those buttons on it" when you have actually figured it out ..... in a live show, between buttons and pedals you can make it do ANYTHING a live drummer would do
Hopefully soon, I'll figure it out. I love your videos, thanks.
Thanks Stephen! This is exactly what I needed. A step by step walkthrough.
I never would have figured all of this out on my own. I don't have the user interface for conversion. I have a conversion cable (MIDI to USB). I had some success a couple years ago transferring data from an old SR-16, but didn't really know what I was doing. I'm going to give this a try. Thanks so much for taking time to do that. ROCK ON!
Thanks for your comment .... glad I was able to help .... the conversion cable should work also.... best wishes and I do intend to make other vids for SR18 ..... but it was good to do one that was actually requested 😊
Thank you so much for this very helpful tutorial! You're a lifesaver!
so helpful!! perfect walkthrough!
Hi Stephen, thanks a lot for your videos. Please, I have a question for you: how can I reset Alesis Sr 18?
Your answer is very important to me.
1. turn the Alesis SR18 off
2.Press and hold SAVE/COPY and ERASE buttons together
3. While holding down these buttons, turn on the SR-18 and keep holding down the buttons for 10 seconds
4. Release both buttons at the same time and the SR-18 will boot up after Reset is complete (may take a few seconds)
You are done ..... your machine is back to factory state .... HOWEVER, you cannot get back the "factory sounds" that came in the USER memory.... so if possible, you should backup these sounds to a DAW using MIDI Bulk Dump as shown in this video above
Thank you Stephen for your valuable video. However, I cannot locate the Sysex view in Cakewalk. I must be missing something obvious but I am now reaching desperation as I must reprogram about 30 patches so I can use my SR18 with a second band. Please point me to the Sysex View if it still exists.
First of all I am using Sonar version 6 LITE on this video..... a VERY old, but VERY simple version...... however, I believe that on ALL versions you simply click on "VIEW" tab and select Sysex from the drop-down menu..... I will confirm this shortly as I actually have all the versions of Sonar right up to PLATINUM (when they went out of business) .... on various other computers in the studio.
Thank you for the reply, Stephen. Do you know if there is still a sysex view in Cakewalk by Bandlab and where it might be found? I can't get it to come up for me.
Alan
@@StephenMendes Thank you for your indulgence. I think that might be my problem as I have the most up to date version (by bandlab) and there appears to be no such option in the drop down menu under "Views". So I can't access anywhere to load and retrieve Sysex data. A pain because I need to store some custom patches to free up some space.
@@alansandeman1741 Try holding down these 3 keys together...... ALT + SHIFT + 7 ..... that should bring up the Sysex Banks screen ..... IF they have not changed it
@@alansandeman1741 PLEASE NOTE: The "Sysex banks" screen is ONLY available when you have a PROJECT loaded....... so you will need to create a "New Project" before you can see it 🙂
Thanks so much for this Stephen really helpful...I was wondering does this save all contents from the sr16 even patterns I've created myself which took me ages to make and if so can I then save them from my DAW to my Pc as a backup or even transfer them to ext disk or cd/dvd....thanks
You can certainly do a SysEx dump of your SR16 into your DAW and save the file anywhere you like .... even put it on a cloud 😊 or a flash drive or external disk..... However, I do not think you can "Restore" the contents of an SR18 from an SR16 backup ..... the two machines are similar but NOT identical ..... your best bet would be to hook the machines together with a MIDI cable and make SR16 the "master" and the SR18 the "slave" for timing clock and MIDI real time song control .... then set SR18 on record .... SR16 on play .... and copy each pattern and song over individually
@@StephenMendes Sorry my mistake I meant to say the sr18 so that shouldn't be a prob so that's great..thanks so much
Mine is not saving my snare volume but only on certain patterns. I don't get it
You can ONLY save "snare volume" (or anything else) on USER patterns...... you cannot save on the PRESET patterns .... make sure you are trying to save to the correct memory space
Are you Irish or Jamaican....or drunk? Or all 3?? Haha just kidding. Cheers and thanks for the very detailed tutorial
I am from a country called Barbados ..... and I am glad you found an interesting video on my channel..... TUTORIALS about MUSIC GEAR is the main focus of the channel and most people seem to be able to follow them even with the accent 🙂
Too scared to try 😅
better do it soon 🙂 ..... unless this works you are DOOMED eventually anyway.... but I know the feeling.... I had the same fears with an RX11 back in 1984
@@StephenMendes I suppose I could buy a second one and try importing everything back to that new one first. That way I'll know if it worked or not without having to assume the risk of losing all my work
@@eishawave3934 yes you could do that....... but dont wait too long, one of these days you may have to restore...... I lost my Yamaha RX11 when it developed problems (all my songs in the memory GONE) that was somewhere back in 2002 ...... and is the reason I bought the Alesis ..... so the sooner you can certify your backups (by whatever means you choose) the safer you will be.... I think you should buy a second one..... it seems you are quite dependent on it 🙂
@@StephenMendes OK will do 'n thx for the heads up my G ! :)